Power couple sparks to cancer charity

Jamie Lynn Sigler Pescatello and her husband, Jake Pescatello, started the San Diego chapter for St. Baldrick’s, a charity for children with cancer. They are shown here with 7-year-old cancer survivor Trevor Wigginton, who is the group's ambassador.

K.C. Alfred

Jamie Lynn Sigler Pescatello and her husband, Jake Pescatello, started the San Diego chapter for St. Baldrick’s, a charity for children with cancer. They are shown here with 7-year-old cancer survivor Trevor Wigginton, who is the group's ambassador.

Jamie Lynn Sigler Pescatello and her husband, Jake Pescatello, started the San Diego chapter for St. Baldrick’s, a charity for children with cancer. They are shown here with 7-year-old cancer survivor Trevor Wigginton, who is the group's ambassador. (K.C. Alfred)

As the bumper sticker says, sometimes the best things in life aren’t things. And as Jake Pescatello and Jamie Lynn Sigler Pescatello would be happy to add, sometimes living the good life isn’t the same as living a good life. They have done both, and the latter option has paid bigger dividends than they ever expected.

“The way we grew up, you graduated from high school, you went to college, you graduated from college and you got a job. And once you started making some money, you’ve made it. But it didn’t feel like enough,” Jake, 33, said. “A lot of people spend their time filling the void with more stuff or more success, but for us, there is more value in giving back.”

In 2009, the Pescatellos had the good-life thing wired. The company Jamie co-founded with Kim Julin Guyader — J Public Relations — had an impressive roster of clients that included the U.S. Grant, the Stingaree nightclub and the Hard Rock Hotels in San Diego and Las Vegas. Jake was the co-founder of Integrity First Financial Group, a fast-growing mortgage banking firm. He sold his interest in the company in 2011 and launched Delphi Development that same year.

So what do you give the couple that appears to have everything? In the case of Jake and Jamie, the best gift of all was a cause they could give their all to.

In 2004, Jake’s father, John, died of lung cancer. After his death, the Pacific Beach couple spent time on the cancer charity-run circuit. They wore the yellow wristbands benefiting Lance Armstrong’s LiveStrong organization. They were doing something, but they wanted to do something more.

Then they discovered the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, the Monrovia, Calif.-based nonprofit group that has raised more than $130 million for childhood-cancer research.

Much of St. Baldrick’s money is raised through “shave-a-thons,” where volunteers shave their heads to show their support for kids with cancer, many of whom lose their hair during treatment. The Pescatellos founded the San Diego chapter of St. Baldrick’s in February of 2009. They threw their first St. Baldrick’s Foundation Shave-A-Thon four weeks later.

“It was Jake and seven of his buddies shaving their heads at Bub’s Dive Bar in Pacific Beach,” said the 34-year-old Jamie, who met her future husband when they were both high school students in South Yarmouth, Mass. “We had two weeks to plan it, and I think all we had to auction off was a snowboard and a pair of socks.”

Even with its handful of participants and rather meager auction offerings, that first event raised $8,000. In 2010, the San Diego shave-a-thon raised $19,000. This year’s event, which was held last weekend at the Quality Social bar downtown, had 48 “shavees” and featured about $30,000 in auction items. At the end of the evening, the shave-a-thon raised more than $40,000 for St. Baldrick’s, and the Pescatellos became more convinced than ever that money isn’t everything.

“When you go out in the world with your head shaved, all these people come up to you and ask, ‘What’s up with you and your bald head?,’ and they love to hear about why you’ve done it,” said Jake, who is a longtime St. Baldrick’s shavee. “If you just write a check, no one wants to hear about it. But this is a story you are happy to tell and people want to hear.”

For the second year running, one of the most popular guests at San Diego’s shave-a-thon was Trevor Wigginton, the 7-year-old cancer survivor who has become the group’s ambassador. Diagnosed with neuroblastoma when he was 3½ years old, Trevor was introduced to St. Baldrick’s when he and his parents came to last year’s event. Trevor’s father, Corey, came to shave his head and Trevor and his mother, Wendie, came to watch. The newcomers left as new members of the ever-expanding St. Baldrick’s family.

“It was awesome. I think I cried the whole time,” Wendie Wigginton said. “The first person who went up to shave their head was a woman, and when she was done, she picked up my son and she said, ‘This is all for you.’ This was a sign to us as parents that they understand how hard it is for a kid to be bald, and they were willing to show the rest of the world that being bald is OK.”

When they talk about watching Trevor transform from a shy little boy to a media-savvy St. Baldrick’s spokesman, the hard-charging Pescatellos get a little mushy around the edges. But not too mushy to take their eyes off their new bottom line.

“At the end of the day, we’re not saving lives here,” Jamie said, looking around her bustling office. “Jake and I wanted to look at how we could change lives, and Trevor is a real-world reminder of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”